OCT symposium emphasizes key applications

Overviews of biomedical imaging in general, and optical coherence tomography (OCT) in particular—by Lawrence Wald (A. A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, MGH) and James Fujimoto (Massachusetts Institute of Technology [MIT]), respectively—kicked off the first international symposium hosted last week by the Center for Biomedical OCT Research and Translation (CBORT) at Harvard Medical School and MGH in Boston. But the full-day program moved quickly from the broad to the specific, with sessions on particular applications, each with multiple speakers. Called Illuminating the Body: New Frontiers in Medical Imaging Using Optical Coherence Tomography, the symposium highlighted some of the most exciting areas in which OCT is progressing: ophthalmology, cardiology, endoscopy, and preclinical imaging.

The attendees I spoke with included biomedical researchers and representatives of technology development companies wanting greater understanding of OCT and its applications. They came to the right place, as the symposium allowed participants to earn continuing medical education (CME) credits while hearing directly from pioneers and leaders in OCT technology and applications, including David Huang of Oregon Health & Science Institute, Johannes de Boer of the University of Amsterdam, and Brett Bouma of Harvard Medical School, who co-directed the program.

Exhibits included Thorlabs, Terumo, and NinePoint Medical, along with Exalos, Princetel, and Axsun Technologies, which also presented a poster on high-speed wideband swept-source lasers for OCT. Other posters, contributed by researchers from around the world, described techniques such as multimodal imaging, quantitative OCT, and applications such as imaging in the head and neck.

CBORT's mission includes training and informing prospective user communities, and the event certainly delivered. Find out more about the center at www.octresearch.org.